


mirrors lie and moonlight makes fools of us all

by JaguarCello



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anorexia, Bulimia, Disordered Eating, Drunk Werewolves, Eating Disorders, Emo music a lot really, Eventual Happy Ending, Exercise Addiction, F/M, First Time, Kissing, M/M, POV Stiles, Pack Dynamics, Pack Feels, Self Harm, Stiles-centric, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-26
Updated: 2015-02-11
Packaged: 2018-03-09 03:46:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3235115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaguarCello/pseuds/JaguarCello
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles used to pity those people in the cautionary tales who used to make themselves puke after a lettuce leaf, or who used to run for miles to atone for a cup of tea.<br/>He has no pity for himself, of course. He really is not like those people. He just wants a little control.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> trigger warnings, obviously. Read the tags, kids. 
> 
> Eating disorders are shitty and tragic and they ruined my life. If you're struggling, or if you're worried, feel free to talk to me, please please please. Nobody should have to go through this alone. 
> 
> my [ask](http://www.francisabernathy.tumblr.com/ask) is here on tumblr, or on twitter I'm [here](https://twitter.com/sepuIchraI).

It’s not a problem, he tells himself, scraping the mayo off his sandwich and trying not to recoil. “Gone off the texture,” he tells Scott. “Reminds me too much of – “

“Yeah,” Scott says, going slightly green. “I know far too much about your masturbatory habits as it is, actually. I understand,” and he shoves a handful of chips in his mouth. Stiles watches, fascinated and nauseated at the same time. Scott looks at the untouched chips on Stiles’ plate. “You not eating those?”

“Oh,” Stiles says, as if he hadn’t thought about it, as if he hadn’t stuffed half the portion in the pockets of his jeans as soon as Scott had been distracted by the sight of Allison in a tight skirt. He has never been more grateful for misogynistic objectification, he thinks, and then he feels bad.

“Allison,” he says, and she looks up, hair falling out of her face as she does. “I really appreciate, erm, your archery skills. I just wanted you to know that, I value your friendship,” he adds, elbowing Scott as he snickers. “Shut the fuck up,” he hisses. “Honestly, I do,” he insists.

She laughs. Scott shovels another lorryload of chips into his mouth, and the bell rings.

In biology he watches the projector cord swinging in the breeze from the fan, and in maths he watches Lydia’s hair as she turns her head, chatting with two almost-as-perfect friends. He is no longer in love with her, he thinks, but he would like to be as thin as she is. It’s not a problem, though.

After school he runs around the lacrosse pitch with Isaac, as if he had any hope of keeping up. Isaac grins at him and runs even faster, legs blurring. Stiles’ legs are burning, and so are his lungs. So is his stomach, so he runs another three laps until his vision starts to fade, and he hurls himself down next to Scott. He lands on Allison, of course, who has her hands under his shirt.

“You’re looking very fit lately,” she says to Stiles, and he scoffs. She exchanges a grin with Scott. “Of course, I really think you’re such a good friend,” she continues, earnestly. “Honestly, you’re – top ten,” and he messes up her hair. She whacks him on the shoulder, and all is well.

He’s broken the rules, though. He was meant to run today, properly, not just chase Isaac in circles. He was meant to refuse every morsel like Persephone in the underworld but the hell is here. Hell is the lard across his thighs and the chip-fat of his arms, wobbling with every movement. Hell is when he was fourteen and chubby, filling the emptiness inside himself with cakes and pies and endless chocolate bars, when he used to sneak to the shop after school and stuff himself with Pringles, cookies, sweets. Pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving with extra cream, of course he wanted it all! Entire packets of cheese gone in a day. Eating and eating and eating as if it would bring his mother back to live, as if his father would smile at the sight of his son gorging on every additive available in the USA.

“You okay?” Scott asks, waving a hand in front of his face. “You’ve gone all spacey on us,” and Stiles blinks. He has dug his fingers so deeply into the flesh of his thigh that when he stretches his fingers he sees crescent moons from his nails, red as blood. They _are_ bleeding, he realises, and pulls his shorts down slightly.

“I’m good,” he says, and grins. “Just – thinking,” he adds, and – remarkably – they believe him.

His father is working late again, which is good. Stiles makes his dinner, and then scrapes the spoon around another plate, dipping the knife and fork into the pasta sauce, and then shoves them both into the dishwasher. He leaves his father’s plate in the microwave.

Upstairs, Stiles slips (waddles) into his tracksuit bottoms and jogs in his room on the spot until he sweats, until his heart is bursting, and then he jogs a little more. It’s not a problem, though.

The next morning is cold. He is awake before his alarm, pinching at the fat he can feel on his stomach. His stomach is the worst part of him, he decides, and rolls out of bed to examine himself in the mirror. He is definitely fatter than yesterday, but he steps on the scales, just in case. They lie to him. They always lie, but between the mirror and the scales he cannot decide who is lying more. He tries to fit the thumb and forefinger of one hand around his upper arm; there are about two inches to go.

Derek Hale’s arms are huge. Easily the size of Stiles’ thigh, and much more muscular; there can’t be an ounce of fat on him. Stiles tries to ignore the growling in his stomach, and leaves for school without saying goodbye to his father; this plagues him all day. Not only is he fat, but he is a bad son; to punish him, the universe sends Derek to his school in a wifebeater tight enough to show off every rippling muscle in his stomach. Want pools in Stiles’ stomach, want and stomach acid, and then he is trying to throw up in the bathroom.

Throwing up burns as it always has done, but recently Stiles has been doing it a little more, and he is getting good at it; good at hiding it too. Running the tap is a well-known secret but Stiles has taken to hiding under the bleachers and throwing up in a plastic bag. This sounds disgusting and is disgusting but it’s necessary if he ever wants to be anywhere near perfect. He also drinks a (diet) soda before he does it, so that he can puke with more ease, and he hates himself every time.

The thing is that Stiles never knew losing weight was this _easy_. He understands for the first time the anguished girls in the health class videos gripping their thighs after eating a piece of lettuce, although for him the reality is very different. _Failure,_ his mind whispers, but he wipes his mouth and emerges from the stall as if nothing has happened. Nothing has happened, really. He just threw up; maybe there’s a bug going round. This is what he tells Scott, when asked about his streaming eyes.

It’s really, really not a problem.


	2. Chapter 2

The scales are lying to him again. He hasn’t lost any weight at all – anyone could see the rolls of fat at his stomach, the soft soft flesh of his upper arm, the baby fat he still has yet to lose from his face. He puts his finger and thumb around his arm, just above the elbow, and there are still two inches to go. Still fat then, he tells himself, and gets into the shower.

If he’s technical about it, he has lost eight pounds. But he’s been doing reading (late nights, tired and puffy eyes, and apparently the more sleep you get then the more weight you lose) and it is just water weight, probably. It’s been weeks and weeks and the weight simply isn’t going anywhere. To be honest there’s no way in hell that he is trying as hard as he should be; drunk, he ate an entire packet of biscuits and couldn’t bring himself to throw it back up again. It is Saturday today, and he has been for a run – a shamble – laden down with his lumpen flesh. He’s barely even sweating, because he is a lazy fat fucking _pig_ and running too quickly hurt his chest. He pokes at his thigh again, and wishes it would wash away with the shampoo that’s swirling down the drain.

He turns the water up just a little. It is so cold all the time, now that he’s trying to keep his calories even lower. He’s gotten good at lying to himself; what used to be a 1200 calorie target has dropped to 800 and ideally it would be around 250. As of yet he has been struggling to keep to it.

After his shower, he gets dressed in the bathroom. This is something he has been doing a lot of recently, scared that his father will see his flabby feeble body and be disgusted, but then, he considers, his father should be disgusted. Stiles shoves two shirts on, and his jeans are a little tight on his stomach still.

The clock ticks in the corner of his bedroom. It’s messy in there, as usual, but he surveys the tip with a curled lip. _How can he have an organised and tidy life if his room is a pigsty_? He shoves the crap on the floor into a pile, and it’s deep enough to sift through. There are a lot of food wrappers: the Pringles can he ate in one sitting, the six (six!) bags of crisps he snarfed down after school a few weeks ago, the jar of olives he decided it would be a good idea to eat, the muffin wrappers. He didn’t even manage to throw any of this up, just sat there and stuffed his face. It really is sickening, honestly. _Children_ have more self control. He imagines unbidden Derek, who seems the type to eat mainly avocado and salad and grilled chicken with the skin cut off. His treacherous mind supplies him then with a ticker-tape of images: Derek showering, stretching, running. Skin soaked with sweat, shirt clinging to each perfect sculptured muscle. Derek _kissing_ -

Derek has the advantage that he has a ridiculous metabolism and a werewolf inside him, snapping its jaws. Scott, too, has become chiselled to the point that girls stare open-mouthed.

Nobody stares at Stiles.

His phone buzzes; a message from Derek. There has been some sort of pack emergency – something to do with a half-digested stag. Stiles really does not want to know, but he has become obsessed with food. He walks the aisles in the supermarkets imagining the salt/fat/sugar/grease of the stuff in the shiny packets. He watches cookery shows with his dad, and then attempts to recreate the meals on there, to mixed success. He has become that weird kid who watches other people eat, eyes following the movement of their jaws, the convulsing of their throats as they swallow, the crunching as they chew – it all seems so _unnecessary_ , to be honest.

 _On my way_ , he tells Derek. _Not that I’m in the pack, but what else do I have to do lol_ he adds, shoving his bag over his shoulder. He has put a two-litre bottle of water in it, both to fill him up and to weigh him down; his shoulders are hurting already but he ignores that. Derek would be more than capable of carrying this, he tells himself, and feels the straps begin to pinch on the flab of his upper arms. There will be deep grooves there by the time he gets to Derek’s, but they remind him of where he needs to shave away the fat.

When he pulls up at Derek’s, the pack is outside. Erica is wearing a mini skirt and Doc Marten boots, and her curves are both astonishing and intimidating. Scott – leaning on Isaac’s shoulder – is bleeding from the head. This may be the emergency, Stiles realises; Boyd is sat between Allison and Lydia, and Derek is standing behind Scott, supporting some of his weight. Stiles thinks, fleetingly, that nobody would be able to support his weight. He is surprised, actually, that his scales have yet to break.

“It’s not really an _emergency_ ,” Scott tells him, wincing, as Derek prods at his head wound. “We found a half-eaten stag in the woods, and it wasn’t any of us. And it’s definitely another werewolf. We can smell it,” he goes on, and Isaac shifts his grip.

“We know there’s another werewolf,” Derek says, and Stiles wonders when his life became the plot to a B-movie. “We just don’t know if it’s friendly, or if it’s – I mean, the last full moon was two weeks ago and the stag seems like a fresh kill. And it didn’t eat all of it either, which is unusual. There’s something very weird about this,” and he looks at Stiles. Stiles feels his stomach swoop in a way that has nothing to do with hunger.

“So, this is werewolf stuff – “ Lydia begins, faking a yawn, and Derek stiffens.

“You’re involved now. You all are,” he says, looking from Allison to Lydia to Scott. “It could just be – freak weather conditions. I doubt that someone’s freezing these things, but it has been cold out lately,” and Stiles nods. He is always cold these days.

The whole thing seems somewhat anticlimactic to Stiles. Most things seem fairly anticlimactic now, but nothing can match the disappointment of having gone a week and barely eaten, and then stepping on the scales and seeing they have barely shifted – but, well. He’s fine.

“I have stuff to do,” he says, and Derek’s eyes flicker across his face. Stiles feels naked under his scrutiny, skin prickling, but not uncomfortably so. “I – my dad’s expecting me back,” he adds, lamely, and he leaves before anyone can say anything. It’s better to be alone for this, anyway.

 _Coffee, smokes and diet Cokes_ runs the refrain in his head, and he has started to drink his coffee black. He thinks about how it used to be – cream, syrup shots, sugar-and-fat and _filth_ flowing through his veins, curdling in his stomach, padding out his face and softening the shadows under his skin – and almost suppresses a shudder, hands grasping at the steering wheel as if enough pain would take away his shame. He’s started smoking, to his shame. Aged seven he had said, proudly, that he would never smoke, never drink, never do drugs – and now, he is ruled by his sins. He wishes sometimes that he been raised Catholic, just for a valid reason for this creeping self-hatred. Catholics have fasting days – and isn’t _that_ funny, the tendency to call starvation by a pretty word. Monks did it, pilgrims did it, and now Stiles will do it. Legions of perfect girls with pin-thin legs and bones rising up through their skin have done it, and will do it.

 He parks, shoves the door open using all his body weight. With that much weight behind it, it opens easily.

Back up in his room, he sips at a diet Coke, and puts the can carefully under his bed. He has decided to keep a record of all his failures, and even a diet drink is a failure. He peeks at the mass of wrappers, and feels his throat convulse.


End file.
